Writing from Personal Experience: Janet Fitch on using the deep parts

Janet Fitch is an author  and teacher of fiction writing.

A profile on her site says she is “the author of the #1 national bestseller White Oleander, a novel translated into 24 languages, an Oprah Book Club book and the basis of a feature film, Paint It Black, also widely translated and made into a 2017 film, and an epic novel of the Russian Revolution, The Revolution of Marina M.

“Additionally, she has written a young adult novel, Kicks, short stories, essays, articles, and reviews, contributed to anthologies and regularly teaches at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

“She taught creative writing for 14 years in the USC Master of Professional Writing program…” [continued]

Janet Fitch comments about some of her experiences as a writer, including emotional health challenges like depression, and using the “deep parts” of oneself.

“Anytime you work with materials that are deep parts of yourself, you feel revulsion at showing things about yourself that you don’t want people to know.

“White Oleander, for example, was so much about loneliness, and I was revealing something about myself.

“You have to work as deeply as you can to give the reader something worth reading, but you’re also showing things about yourself that you’re not pleased with.

“It’s your flaws, not your strengths that go down in the depths of your books. You’re exposed, like dreaming you’re naked in a public building.”

[HAVE YOU BEEN TO THE DARK PLACES YOUR CHARACTERS HAVE BEEN?]

“I’ve been depressed many times in my life.

“But under it all I’m an optimist.

“I’ve never been in that extreme a state, like my suicidal character Michael Faraday in Paint it Black.

“I have to tell myself, Life can be good, and I can get through this. This will pass.”

From interview by Mary Curran-Hackett, Writer’s Digest, 2008.

Photo at top by Aaron Salcido from post: Novelist Janet Fitch, Zócalo Public Square.

See list of Janet Fitch books.

Lower photo of man reading is from Janet Fitch’s Facebook page.

Her caption: 

Writing quote of the day, from Joyce Carol Oates, when asked for best writing advice: “Most important for a writer to read widely, enthusiastically. Writing is a consequence of reading, and writing well is a consequence of reading well.”
(photo h/t kim-not-kym.deviantart)

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See multiple articles on depression and other challenges in list:

Mental Wellness and Emotional Health articles

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Using our shadow side for creative expression

“A dark side of being a creative and a performer, is to have access to certain emotional states that are the medium through which art is created.” – Psychotherapist Mihaela Ivan Holtz

How do actors and other artists make use of their inner emotional lives, including their shadow selves or dark sides, to be more alive and creative?

Actor Anthony Hopkins has talked about engaging with this side of ourselves:

“I’m not a psychologist, but at the back of it I think there is a feeling that everything is uncertain, there is no guarantee of anything and that causes us great fascination and fear.

“So we look into the dark side of ourselves and the world.

“I think the healthy way to live is to make friends with the beast inside oneself, the dark side of one’s nature, and have fun with it.”

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Related pages:

See menu for more articles on Writers and Writing.

article: Make friends with the shadow side of ourselves to be more creative

articles: Mental/Emotional Health [on this site]

Facebook / The Creative Mind  {one of my pages}

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